Danger: Check Your Cosmetics!

I saw the movie "America The Beautiful" last night as part of the AFI Dallas film festival. It was a world premier (i.e. never been seen before) and sold out.

The movie was a documentary that asks the question: Is America Obsessed With Beauty? I'll have more of a review in a later blog posting but I wanted to alert you to one thing that I learned in the movie (and later researched and found it to be absolutely true): The US Government allows cosmetic products that contain cancer causing ingredients, potential neuro-, liver-, and immunotoxins; and suspected hormone disruptors that could cause birth defects children.

Not only that, but these ingredients are found in varying quantities in probably nearly all of the cosmetics, lotions and sprays that you currently use.

You can read more about this here: The Ugly Side Of Cosmetics. I highly recommend checking your products against the database provided in the article to consider which of your cosmetics should be replaced.

AFI Dallas

The largest film festival to ever come to Dallas is arriving tomorrow, March 22. The film festival, sponsored by the AFI (American Film Institute) will feature over 150 feature films, documentaries, short films as well as panels, parties, family entertainment and special events. For those in the Dallas area, venues will include the Magnolia, the Angelica, The Nasher, the Inwood and SMU among a few others.

Noted celebrities attending will include David Lynch, Lauren Becall, Alan and Merilyn Bergman, Sydney Pollack, Laura Dern, and Marvin Hamlisch among others. Oh - I'll be there too, hobnobbing and trying to find a distributor for my film "jeff's random thoughts". hahaha

For more information, go the the AFI Dallas website. Here is my schedule (so far):

MySpace Observations

I finally got a page on MySpace. Actually I've had a very basic of pages on MySpace for probably two years but didn't really know what to do with it. I still am a little cloudy as to the benefits of it. But I went ahead and filled out the page more properly. You may view it here.

So why am I on? I guess there are several reasons. First, it does seem that most people that I meet now have a page there. It makes for an easy way to keep in touch with new acquaintances and learn more about them when you can find their MySpace page. Second, I just wanted to learn more about the benefits of these Web 2.0 social networking applications and the only way to really learn these things is to dive in. Third, I link people to my other pages (like this blog) - so MySpace is just another space to exist in and promote my blog and podcast.

After a couple of weeks I've made some observations about this "new world". Keep in mind that I am most certainly not in the demographic that has embraced MySpace so vigorously!

1) Most MySpace pages are unreadable

What an irony this is. My MySpace page is actually very intentionally clean and readable and organized. This is not normal. In fact, I would go so far to say that 20-30% of pages that I come across are unreadable. And 90% of all pages are difficult to read. Here is an example of a typical MySpace page. Also consider that the example is actually a business trying to promote themselves. I'm not sure if being neat and tidy like mine is considered "uncool" - perhaps hectic and hard-to-read (background and text is too similarly colored) is hip. I don't know. Maybe it's just amateur hour...

2) Most people's pages have more comments than context

On MySpace, you can leave comments on other people's pages. 90% of all comments seem to be either "happy birthday" (MySpace gives you notification of upcoming friends' birthdays) or funny graphics. The problem here is that most comments aren't interesting to readers of the page. So you have a situation where the majority of one's public page is made up of comments that only the page creator cares about. Not too compelling. But maybe that's me showing my age again. Maybe younger people find that the most fascinating part of MySpace (i.e. checking up on their friends).

3) I like the messaging and even the blog features

MySpace allows to quickly message all of your friends in one stroke. These messages are not public and only go to your friends. It's actually pretty nice. I've received messages about charity events from my more charity-loving friends, a lost puppy looking for an owner, and announcements from Barak Obama (one of my friends - though, of course, it's not really him!). They also have a blogging feature which I use to pretty much just repurpose the content on my main blog. Since I only have one subscriber on my MySpace blog (thanks Susan!) and since there are very few of my friends that blog, I don't think blogging is a big application for MySpace users.

4) Potential networking tools

MySpace gives you the ability to add your schools, businesses, industries, interests to your profile in such a way that you can easily search for these things in others. For example, I could look up all of those who graduated from my high school in my year (I did and didn't find many). Drat - I'm old. I can see some potential in meeting old friends or finding new ones in your industry for networking.

Conclusion

Personally I would never use MySpace as my only web presence to promote my business or my band. But it's useful for that as a supplement because of it's messages features and wide popularity. Limited layout capabilities and ultimately limited control would still want me to create a unique web presence for that. But for the common person, it's not a bad way to keep in touch with friends or even find new ones with common interests.

St. Patrick's Day

I had my annual St. Patrick's Day Brunch yesterday. As usual, I overbought in the meat and champagne departments. What am I going to do with all of it? But it was a very fun day. Afterwards we headed out into the neighborhood for some house parties.

The neighborhood that I live in is known for it's St. Patrick's Day celebrations. It all started with a city-sponsored parade a few years ago in the northern part of Greenville Avenue. Then a few bars in the area got together and, with city cooperation, were able to get part of lower Greenville Avenue blocked off for a street party. This permeated into the surrounding neighborhoods (early century neighborhood full of Craftsman and Tudor revival houses - kind of an 'edgy' range of residents) where neighbors started to host their friends to enjoy the convivial day and proximity to the "action".

These days about 10,000 people are drawn into the neighborhood they say. We didn't even venture in the blocked off area this year as that part has become so shoulder-to-shoulder crowded that it's really not much fun - or perhaps I'm just getting older ;-).

Here's some pictures from the day (I should have taken more!)....

St. Patrick's Day 2007

Trader Vic's In Dallas

I went out with a few friends last night for drinks at the new Trader Vic's in Dallas. Who doesn't love Tiki drinks, right? Trader Vic's just opened up on March 1 but what I didn't realize is that the international restaurant/bar was in Dallas before. And it gets even more intriguing...

Trader Vic's was in Dallas from 1967 until 1989 when it closed down. It was in the exact same place. Not only that - but the interior was left mostly untouched for 18 years! Who knew that I had an awesome tiki lounge 5 minutes from my house that was in mothballs? I just find this fascinating. My friend Shane even found it more fascinating and found these pictures taken by someone who got to get inside about 3 years ago: Trader Vic's 2004

Shane is originally from Dallas and was scurrying around the place last night inspecting walls and piping and taking it all in trying to compare the new restaurant with his memories of the previous one. It was quite amusing!

So how does a restaurant keep most of it's exotic woodwork and furniture mothballed in the same property for 18 years? How do the investors not liquidate it? It's just fascinating to me.

Anyway - it was a great success. Totally tiki. Totally fun. We didn't get to try the food save a couple of appetizers but I'm anxious to give it a go as I have eaten at the Trader Vic's in Tokyo a couple of times and was impressed.

Some great pictures and history of the old and new here: Tiki Central
From D Magazine: Trader Vic's To Rise Again